Wednesday, April 7, 2010

The Sweet Taste of Victory...Carmenere, Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc

Well, the first order of business is obviously a final report on the bugs. I seriously doubt this will be the "final" report on bugs, but it's final for now. Here it is:
Steph: 3 Bugs: 1

A solid win for me! I am happy to report that we have not had any moths in our kitchen for probably 3 weeks. The ants have been completely eliminated with my Terro traps (a plug for them) and I have only found 1 roach since my last report and he was dead, meaning the poison is working. Hooray!!! It's much better not to have to greet my little friends each morning.

To celebrate (and also because we have been dreaming about it for a long time), Brian and I took a trip to Chile. Many of you know that I studied there for about 6 months during my undergraduate studies and that Brian came to visit me during that time and saw part of Chile. We both loved it and have wanted to go back ever since, particularly to see my host family and to do wine country. This trip was about a 10 day trip and was centered on seeing the things we saw when I was there as a student but Brian didn't have a chance to experience, visiting my host family, checking out Santiago and seeing the vineyards. It was amazing!!! Here are the highlights:

Santiago-What a wonderful city.....we enjoyed a lot of time just metroing from neighborhood to neighborhood and walking around to enjoy the parks, get a feel for the city and enjoy a pisco sour or cafe here and there. We had some wonderful food and met up with a colleague of Brian's who works there. We had a great time and returned for a day on the back end of our trip before flying out. I think Fuente Alemana was Brian's favorite part (I'm hoping he might have time to write this week and share a bit with you).

Vina del Mar/Valparaiso-Not even sure where to begin. Obviously in Vina we spent time with my host family. We had such a great time catching up and they were blown away by Brian's Spanish, so that was fun. Chilean hospitality always amazes me. Before we left lunch with my host family, they presented us with the hand crocheted table centerpiece that my host mom had made almost 6 years ago when Brian and I were married and she has been saving for us ever since. Along with that came 2 boxes of artisan alfajores and a bottle of pisco (Note: Alfajores are an incredibly indulgent and wonderful Chilean treat. They consist of two pastries sandwiched together with manjar and covered in chocolate. Pisco is the traditional Chilean liquor. They mix it with lemon juice and sugar to make a pisco sour or with coca cola to make Piscola. If you want to see a Chilean get angry, just mention that you heard the Peruvians actually invented Pisco.) So very Chilean and so much hospitality I don't even have words. In Valparaiso we spent time wandering the hills. We walked up to Pablo Neruda's house on the top of one of the highest Valpo. hills and took some pictures and enjoyed the huge murals that are part of the open air museum on our walk down. It was really fun and we got a great day for it.

Wine country-Here again, so many highlights...We tried to see a variety of vineyards and wineries while we were there and really feel like we did that and still had time to relax. We saw an organic, biodynamic winery owned by one of the largest wine producers in Chile (Emiliana), one of the most modern facilities for producing premium wine in the region (Lapostolle), a smaller boutique vineyard where we talked with an 86 year old man who was the owner and founder of the brand (Laura Hartwig), enjoyed a four course tasting lunch with wine pairings at House of Morande and stayed at a luxury hotel at one of the vineyards that was absolutely beautiful (Matetic). We are looking forward to hopefully being able to find some of our favorites from these wineries when we're home and sharing our enjoyment of them with you.

So, as you can tell, we had a wonderful trip. We're missing Chile a little bit, but more than anything it made us look forward to planning more adventures there. I think it is a country we will return to many times...so much to see.

I'm finally getting around to getting pictures organized and posted on a site accessible for everyone. Chile pictures and some Venezuela stuff's available at www.beckmannsabroad.myphotoalbum.com. For some things you will need a password and we're only making it available to people we know (such as our apartment). If that's you and you want to see the password protected stuff, just send me an email (steph_beckmann@yahoo.com) and I'll set you up. Looking forward to hearing from some of you soon!

Hugs,
Steph